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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27507886">Fill It With Gold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviarty/pseuds/waywardangel'>waywardangel (leviarty)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Claire Novak's Parents, Family, Fix-It of Sorts, Happy Ending, Jack Kline and Claire Novak are Like Siblings, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, but a lot of bittersweet before we get there, mcd is not permanent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 03:40:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,004</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27507886</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviarty/pseuds/waywardangel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One year.</p><p>The longest year of his life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>296</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fill It With Gold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Loosely inspired by the song <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/5Ou6LL6HWINjycSYYlMsP8?si=NNsKgXM9RwSb1jttXfUy5w">Gold</a> by Emily Anderson, which feels so strongly of Destiel right now, but in the most positive and uplifting way possible given the circumstances. I urge you to go take a listen, because it’s a seriously underrated song, and I ended up listening to it through most of writing this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong> <em>Just a little bit broken</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Like I’ve been cracked wide open</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Will I ever</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Will I ever</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>Put myself back together again</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>  </strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When Chuck was finally gone, everyone came back. Everyone he had snapped away returned, right in the spot they had vanished from. Eileen, Donna, Bobby, the whole damn world faded back into existence. No one seemed to remember what happened in the days between—in fact, they didn’t seem to be aware at all that anything <em>had</em> happened. If not for the physical evidence of car accidents and cold food and digital calendars, the last almost-apocalypse might’ve gone completely unnoticed.</p><p>And after the initial panic and confusion, everyone went back to their lives as if nothing happened, letting the whole impossible thing fade into nothing more than a bizarre memory, a group hallucination. Only those who knew, the hunters closest to the Winchesters, had any idea what had really gone down.</p><p> </p><p>Dean hadn’t let himself hope that Castiel would be among those returned. He hadn’t been whisked away by their cruel God, he’d been taken by an entity far older and unreachable. Dean knew he wouldn't have been returned.</p><p>But it didn’t stop him from checking the dungeon when they got back, and then searching the whole damn bunker just to be sure.</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t sleep.</p><p>Not that he’d ever slept much to begin with. Since Hell, since Purgatory, since the Mark… there had been too much shit to let him rest more than the bare minimum.</p><p>But now.</p><p>Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was Cas. His last words. His confession.</p><p>And he saw himself. His regret. His failure in stopping the angel from leaving, this time forever.</p><p> </p><p>They still went on hunts. It was the only damn thing either of them really knew, and in some ways, simple hunts without the constant threat of something bigger and badder… it was almost quaint in its simplicity.</p><p>His heart just wasn’t in it.</p><p> </p><p>He got lost in remembering.</p><p>The first time they met. The first handful of time he’d died. Their first trip through Purgatory.</p><p>Had Cas known back then? Did he already love him? Or was it later? When Dean had pushed him away because Gadreel demanded it, or when the Mark had compelled him to destroy everything that kept him human. Or when Cas had said yes to Lucifer. Had he loved him then?</p><p>And his regret could’ve consumed him. Because Dean had known how he felt about the angel for years. Since before they stopped the Darkness. He hadn’t been ready to confront it then, but there had been plenty of moments since…</p><p>If only they had known.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dean leaned against the kitchen counter, eyes closed, sipping his beer, willing it to erase everything. It wasn’t strong enough for that, he knew, but he was also afraid of who he would be if he drank anything stronger.</p><p>He heard Jack walk in, move quietly to the fridge for a snack. He didn’t say anything, and for a moment, Dean didn’t either. He just listened as the kid rummaged through the fridge, then closed the door. Dean opened his eyes and watched as he left.</p><p>“You know I love you, right?” Dean said, stopping Jack cold in his tracks. The kid looked down at his feet, but he didn’t look at Dean. “I know I’ve said and done a lot of shit, and I don’t expect you to forgive me for the way I’ve treated you. But I just want you to know. You’re family.”</p><p>Jack stood still and silent for a long moment, and Dean knew… it was far too late to fix their relationship. Too much damage had been done. Too much time.</p><p>Jack set his plate of cold pizza down on the counter, and the next thing he knew, the kid’s arms were wrapped around him, his face buried somewhere in his chest. Dean brought his arms up to return the embrace.</p><p>“I forgive you,” Jack said, his voice muffled.</p><p>He didn’t deserve it. But he would take it.</p><p> </p><p>The hunts became fewer and further between. Either because there was someone else to take care of it, or because Sam was busy somewhere with Eileen. And they both knew the only reason Sam had been encouraging them out as much as he had was because he was <em>worried</em>. He needed to give Dean something to do, lest he lose himself in everything else. Neither of them were as committed to that life as they once had been.</p><p> </p><p>“I want you to go,” Dean said, a few months after the barely-averted apocalypse.</p><p>“What?” Sam asked, furrowing his brow.</p><p>“I want you to leave,” he clarified. “I want you and Eileen to go off and have whatever passes for a normal life. You’ve earned it.”</p><p>“Dean—” he started to object.</p><p>“No, I’m serious. I can’t…” He sighed. “I can’t have that life. But you can. And I’m begging you. Please have it. For me. And more importantly, have it for you.”</p><p> </p><p>It took some convincing; he had known it would. But eventually, Sam did pack up his things and leave the nest. And despite his initial reluctance in making the bunker home, it took over a week to get all his things packed and squared away.</p><p>“You sure have a lot of junk,” Dean said, looking passed him at the moving van.</p><p>Sam rolled his eyes. “Jerk.”</p><p>“Bitch.”</p><p>He watched the smile fade into seriousness. “Are you sure about this?” he asked, for maybe the hundredth time.</p><p>“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Dean said. He cracked a smile and looked at Jack. “Besides, I’ve got the kid to keep me company.” He threw an arm around Jack’s shoulder.</p><p>“We’ll keep each other out of trouble,” Jack said.</p><p>Sam let out a laugh. “Alright, now I know I can’t leave.”</p><p>“We’ll be fine,” Dean assured him. “Now, go. Go get your girl, and tell her you love her, and have a bunch of fat babies.”</p><p>Sam laughed again, rolling his eyes. “I don’t even know if either of us knows what a normal life looks like.”</p><p>Dean shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. Go. We’ll come visit once you’re all settled in.”</p><p>“You better.”</p><p>Dean and Jack watched him leave, and Dean felt himself fill with an overwhelming sense of longing. Not for his brother, but for all the things he hoped he would have now. For all the things that he himself would never have.</p><p>He used the arm still thrown over Jack’s shoulder to pull him closer, kissing his temple. “Alright, kid, what’s this game you’ve been wanting to show me?”</p><p>Jack grinned and excitedly led him back into the bunker.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Claire stopped by more often now, and Dean was sure Sam had enlisted her to keep an eye on them. But he wasn’t irritated by it—okay, he was maybe a little miffed that his brother didn’t think they could take care of themselves, but he was happy to have Claire around.</p><p>Sometimes they stayed in, watching movies they’ve somehow missed over the years. Sometimes they went out and did <em>whatever</em>.</p><p>Sometimes it felt almost normal.</p><p>Just a guy and his adult kids. No one that caught them laughing over lunch at the Cracker Barrel had any idea that his family was made of the not-exactly children of the man he’d loved and lost.</p><p> </p><p>He was almost happy.</p><p> </p><p>Claire brought them along on hunts. She tried not to at first—initially because she still clung to the need to do things on her own, and then later because she didn’t want to drag them back into it all over again. But there was a case an hour or so away, a <em>weird</em> one, that required a little more experience than she had under her belt. And then there was one a few hours out that she claimed she couldn’t handle on her own.</p><p>And then it was sort of all over, like they were freaking hunting buddies or some shit. Like she was lonely. Or maybe like she was worried he was.</p><p>And he went along with it, because maybe he was lonely, and maybe he still liked the family business.</p><p> </p><p>But even if he was still the best damn hunter in the country, he was getting too old for this. Too tired.</p><p> </p><p>“You go on without me,” he said when Jack got off the phone with Claire. She’d caught wind of something three states over.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“It sounds like a shifter. You guys can handle it without me.” They’d handled a hell of a lot worse than that. “Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and then tossing the keys to Jack.</p><p>Jack caught them instinctively, but stared down at them as though he’d never seen them before, and couldn’t fathom what they were doing there.</p><p>“I don’t understand,” he said.</p><p>Dean smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Take the car, go meet up with Claire. Call me if you need anything. See you in a few days.”</p><p> </p><p>Not that he didn’t worry.</p><p>Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if this was ever how Bobby had felt. Watching his best friend’s kids go off to a job where even a simple, milk-run case could go south in an instant. His best friend’s kids, who he loved like they’re his own.</p><p>He set off to rearrange some things, to fix the mess of tangled wires in a drawer where they kept all the fake federal lines.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>I can’t believe you gave him the car,</em>” where the first words out of Sam’s mouth when Dean answered the phone.</p><p>“I didn’t give him the car, I let him borrow it.”</p><p>“<em>I can’t believe you let him borrow the car,</em>” Sam amended.</p><p>Dean rolled his eyes. “She should be hunting, Sammy, you know that.” That car, his Baby, had been hunting for most of her life, and for all of theirs, first in John’s hands, then in Dean’s. She was reliable, and beautiful, and deserved far better than being parked in a garage, only leaving for the occasional trip to the farmer’s market. Maybe she belonged with Jack now.</p><p> </p><p>He was proud of his little setup. A row of phones, neatly labeled and hung on the wall of the map room. A corkboard map that would’ve put most of Bobby’s trackers to shame. He hadn’t spent a weekend building a panic room, as Bobby once had, he didn’t need to. The whole place already had stronger warding than anything any of them had ever dreamed of back then. But now it had everything he needed, not as a hunter, but as support.</p><p>He let out a laugh as he sipped his coffee and admired his handiwork. If Sammy could see him now, holding up the research division of the family business like he was the books guy all along.</p><p> </p><p>When Jack handed him the keys after the third or fourth or fifth hunt without him, Dean handed them back.</p><p>“She’s yours,” he said.</p><p>“What?” Jack asked, not understanding.</p><p>“You’ve earned it.” He’d taken care of her. He brought her back in good shape, cleaned off all the blood and guts, and when she came back dinged, he’d fixed her up all on his own. He’d earned it.</p><p>“Thank you,” Jack said, still not quite sure he deserved this gift. “I won’t let you down.”</p><p>“You never do.”</p><p> </p><p>Christmas eventually rolled around, and for the first time in a long time, they celebrated it (the time with Mrs. Butters notwithstanding; it had been the middle of March and didn’t quite count).</p><p>Dean and Jack had gone and picked out a tree and tied it to Baby’s roof and drove home with the scent of pine encompassing them. They set it up in the middle of the library, and invite Sam and Eileen and Claire and whoever else to come help them decorate.</p><p>Dean closed his eyes and listened to their voices filling the void around him, holding on to all the love he feels for them.</p><p>If he closed his eyes long enough, he could almost pretend Cas was sitting there with him.</p><p>He was almost happy.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>I think we’re gonna get married</em>,” Sam told him one day. “<em>I mean, I haven’t asked her yet, officially, but we’ve talked about it. I wanted you to know.</em>”</p><p>“I’m happy for you,” Dean said. And he was. “Both of you. You deserve it.” They deserved every drop of happiness and love they could get out of life.</p><p>A week later, it was official. Eileen had beat him to it, proposed to him in the middle of the park with an elegant gold band.</p><p>And Dean had laughed, when they called to tell them. He had laughed, and laughed, and laughed.</p><p>He loved them so much.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He woke up feeling like he hadn’t rested at all. He looked at the clock.</p><p>One year.</p><p>It had been exactly one year since he lost Cas.</p><p>He’d made it a whole year.</p><p> </p><p>He longed.</p><p>It was always there, the feeling that clung to every other emotion he still had. Some days it felt like it would consume him, tear him apart from the inside out. And some days it didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Hey</em>,” Claire said when he answered the phone. There was something in her voice that he couldn’t identify, didn’t even know where to begin. “<em>I need you. Not just Jack. I need both of you.</em>”</p><p>“Can it wait?” He really wasn’t feeling up to it today. Maybe tomorrow.</p><p>“<em>It really, really can’t</em>,” she said, and there was just enough desperation in her voice that he believed her.</p><p>“Okay. Where?”</p><p>“<em>Pontiac</em>,” she said, and his heart lurched. “<em>Not far from my old house. I’ll send you the coordinates.</em>”</p><p> </p><p>He felt like he was going to be sick. It was too much. Claire’s childhood home. The place he’d been raised from Hell. Where he’d first laid eyes on Cas.</p><p>He closed his eyes, his head resting against the window as Jack drove them along the empty highway. He tried to let the purr of the engine settle his soul. It didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>“What are we doing here, Claire?” he asked, his voice somehow masking the frustration he felt. An old barn, condemned and forgotten in the middle of an empty field. A place that shouldn’t have meant anything, and yet it meant so much.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she said. She held out a knife and, before he knew what was happening, she had sliced the blade along his palm.</p><p>“What the hell?!” he exclaimed, clenching his fist closed. Blood dripped into a bowl she held beneath it. She then cut Jack’s palm, and then her own, letting their blood flow and mix into the saucer.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Jack asked as she turned her back to them and began tossing seemingly random herbs and flowers in. Jack held his palm over Dean’s, healing both their wounds simultaneously.</p><p>“If it works, you’ll know,” she said. “If it doesn’t, well, its better if you don’t know.” She held the final ingredient over the bowl, then paused and turned to them. “Cross your fingers.” And she dropped the palmful of powder into the swirling ooze.</p><p> </p><p>There was a bubbling hiss, like water that had been left to boil too long.</p><p>A hole opened in the universe, an oily blackness trying to claw its way through.</p><p>“Claire?!” Dean shouted. What had she been thinking?</p><p>“What are you doing?” Jack asked. “This is too dangerous!”</p><p>“It’s okay,” she said. “Just give it a sec.”</p><p>The Empty let out a burp, and then something tumbled through, spat up like an unwanted pit. And the hole closed up again as though it was never there at all.</p><p>“Castiel?” Jack said, stepping forward as the angel pulled himself to his feet and brushed off his trenchcoat. Cas looked up in confusion, his eyes flicking from Jack, to Claire, to Dean, and back to Jack as the kid threw his arms around his father.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Cas asked, hugging Jack through his confusion.</p><p>“Rowena and I figured it out a while ago,” Claire said, stepping forward. When Jack released him, she closed the gap and hugged tightly around his middle. “But it had to be today.” She pulled away and looked up at him, smiling. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find you sooner.”</p><p>“Cas?” Dean said, stepping forward slowly, not quite believing it. He was certain this couldn’t be real, that any moment he was going to wake up alone in his bed.</p><p>But that didn’t happen.</p><p>Claire and Jack backed away, clearing the path between them.</p><p>“How long was I gone?” he asked, his eyes locking with Dean’s.</p><p>Dean shook his head. “Long enough,” he said, stopping just a little bit too close—much closer than he’d explained was appropriate all those years ago. He opened his mouth to say… something. He didn’t know what.</p><p>He’d thought about it a million times—all the things he would say if he ever got this chance. And now that it was here… all the words were lost.</p><p>He fell back on what he knew. He leaned forward, closing the last bit of distance between them, pressing their lips together briefly before pulling into a crushing hug. “I love you, too.” He’d wanted to tell him so many things, about how he saved him, how he was the one who made <em>Dean</em> care. But those words would come later, when he knew how to form them. Right now, this was enough. “I love you, too.”</p><p>He pulled back but didn’t let go. He reached out for Jack, then Claire, pulling them into their hug. He kissed the top of Claire’s head, then Jack’s temple, and then finally Cas’ lips again.</p><p>The four of them stood there for a while, breathing and crying and <em>loving</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Dean took Cas’ hand in his own as they walked back to the car, and he didn’t let go.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Post-Inherit The Earth Note: I like my ending better. I did like the episode, and we'll see what happens next week, but, for now at least, I like my version better 🤣</p><p>UPDATE: If you want something light and outrageously fluffy to cure your tears, I wrote a short <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27577553">sequel</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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